Cases Where Social Media Made People Lose Their Job

by infohub

Oh, social media. The wondrous invention of the 21st century that has the technology to educate us and keep us informed of literally everything happening around the world; but at the same time, a service by which making a complete fool of ourselves has never been so easy.

It’s true. So many of us have all posted something on Facebook or Twitter, regretted it and decided to take it down again before anyone can see it. Making tasteless social media posts is basically an invitation for people to judge us away, and make us a laughing stock or subject of hate and ridicule in a matter of minutes.

Here are some people who have gone through the exact same situation described, and not only are they famous for all the wrong reasons, they’ve ended up losing their jobs too.

The PR executive who thought making a joke about AIDS before her flight to Africa would be hilarious

In 2013, Justine Saco, a senior PR executive at the famous media company IAC, which owns The Daily Beast and Tinder, was boarding a flight to South Africa. Before she boarded, she tweeted one of the most tasteless tweets of our time that could come from a white person. She said, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

Even though Sacco did not have that many followers, only 170, her tweet went viral while she was on her flight. When she landed, it was already the number one trending tweet and she switched on her phone only to receive a number of texts and emails slamming her tweet. Among them was a mail from her boss, informing her that she was fired.

The Yelp employee who probably should have addressed her compensation woes more discreetly

In early 2016, a Yelp employee, Talia Jones wrote about how her low paying job was inconveniencing her life in every possible way. Only she posted this on Medium in a very open letter to her boss, the Yelp CEO. She was a customer service rep and lived in San Francisco, but her low pay made her unable to pay for groceries and heater, apart from her many debts. She claimed 80 percent of her pay went for rent.

The CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, replied to her, agreeing that San Francisco is indeed an expensive city. However, what the personal attacks towards him and the company landed Jones was far from a raise. She ended up getting fired.

The York University professor who had a very different idea of social activism

In 2016, a professor at York University, Nikolaos Balaskas made posts on Facebook which were anti-semitic in nature. He even included links to anti-semitic websites like jewwatch.com. His posts were seen by the Jewish advocacy organization in his department, which brought it to the attention of the university.

Balaskas was let go with a warning, and Facebook soon deleted his posts before the university could ask him. However, the professor stood by the idea that he had to educate followers of historical circumstances and posted the same materials. He was soon fired.

The social media manager who only wanted to help a kid learn how to spell

The social media manager for Frederick County Public School’s twitter account, Kate Nash lost her job because of one kid who could not spell. A storm hit the county and a student tweeted at the school to please close school “tammarow”. Seeing it as the perfect chance to educate this poor kid, Nash replied, “But then how will you learn to spell ‘tomorrow’?”. Sassy Kate was told to delete her educational reply and apologize to the kid. She lost her job soon after the incident.

The comedian who should’ve been more sensitive (or at least pretended)

Back in 2011, Gilbert Gottfried, a comedian, made a series of jokes on Twitter about Japan’s 2011 tsunami, due to which more than 3,000 lost their lives. Some of his jokes were pretty insensitive, like “Japan called me. They said 'maybe those jokes are a hit in the U.S., but over here, they're all sinking” and “Japan is really advanced. They don't go to the beach. The beach comes to them”. He was the voice of the Aflac Duck at the time and soon lost his job.

The fresh graduate who lost her job before she even started

In 2009, Connor Riley, a 22 -year old woman who was a recent graduate of Information Management, was offered a job by Cisco, the California-based tech company. Wow, Connor is really doing well with her life, you might think. But you definitely won’t be impressed with Connor after hearing the full story.

After the job offer, she tweeted: “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work”. A Cisco associate saw her tweet and informed HR, which led to Connor losing her job before she even started.

The Taco Bell employee who clearly was not toilet-trained

Back in 2012, Cameron Jankowski, an employee at Taco Bell at Fort Wayne, Indiana, thought it would be a really smart move to tweet a picture of himself peeing on a plate of nachos. Why you ask? Well, Cameron wanted to impress Hunter Moore, king of revenge porn media.

Soon, people were enraged and the infamous hacker association Anonymous even released a video on YouTube containing personal information about Jankowski. He was fired from Taco Bell and ended up deleting his Twitter account.

The HSBC bankers who thought re-enacting ISIS killings would be their ticket to stardom

In 2015, six bankers at HSBC in Birmingham, England posted a video on Instagram of them re-enacting a mock ISIS beheading. Five wore all-black suits with masks, while the remaining one – the one who played the victim – wore an orange jumpsuit, and kneeled down on the ground in front of the five men. They were soon fired when the video went viral, and to make matters worse, they had the most pathetic excuse – the video was a part of team-building exercise sponsored by the bank!

The Russian paramedic who clearly needs to straighten her priorities

Tatiana Kulikova was a paramedic in Kirov, Russia, an obviously important job because it involves life and death. But seeing her Instagram posts at the time would make you think twice about her dedication to her job. She posted selfies that she would take with patients in the ambulance. Most of the time, they were either unconscious or dying. She also took time to come up with extremely creative captions and poses.

For example, in one picture, she called the patient “a moron” and showed her middle finger, and in another, wrote about how she hated her job with a picture of a man having a heart attack. She’s lucky she does not have it anymore.

The Chicago bartender who is still unbelievably racist in the 21st century

Jessica Harr, a bartender at Proof, a famous nightclub in Chicago posted some seriously racist words on Facebook attacking black people, which eventually got her fired from her job. Unsurprisingly, Jessica is white.

She wrote, with very bad grammar and poor use of punctuations, “wow so insane how one race of people can be so fucking incompetent and disgusting…. they make everything dirty ignorant and cant act like normal human beings. Even when theyre in their 40's they cant act intelligent. and they wonder why they cant find jobs?!?! Id never f*cking hire one either”.

InfoHub by GoLookUp covers the latest and most comprehensive latest updates, news and information from around the web. InfoHub writers explore the internet and collect, analyze and deliver valuable information for our readers.